Christie Embraces Online Sales Tax

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, speaking at a think tank earlier this month, recently reached an agreement with Amazon to collect sales taxes on his state’s online purchases.

In a dramatic change, Republican governors — including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — are supporting sales taxes on online purchases in an attempt to send more revenue to state coffers.

As the Journal’s Monica Langley reported, the conservative governors are breaking their no-new-taxes opposition as a way to deal with their state’s fiscal crises. The push picked up steam recently when Christie, an oft-mentioned vice presidential candidate, reached a deal with Amazon.com to collect sales tax on online purchases from New Jersey.

The online retail giant was looking for a spot in the Northeast to build two distribution center and, while it wasn’t ready to start collect sales taxes, was eyeing New Jersey to cut down on delivery time and costs. Christie, meanwhile, saw this as a chance to bring jobs and sales-tax revenue to his state. As Langley reports:

“What we saw here was a rapidly growing bipartisan coalition of business groups, labor, Republicans and Democrats coming together because money and jobs were more important than political gamesmanship,” said New Jersey Assemblyman Troy Singleton, a Democrat and union official who strategized over beer with an official from the state Chamber of Commerce on supporting the Amazon package.

On May 30, Mr. Christie announced that the online retailer wouldn’t charge the state’s 7% sales tax until July 2013 in exchange for bringing an estimated 1,500 full-time jobs to New Jersey, as well as “thousands” of seasonal, part-time and construction jobs. Amazon received some standard economic-development tax incentives as well.